Pros: It reminds us of great directors like Frank Capra and Preston Sturges
Cons: Capra and Sturges stopped making films 50 years ago.
The Bottom Line: Don't get trapped in this clap-trap crap. But if you do, bonk yourself on the head. Then maybe you'll wake up with no memory of what just happened.
Once upon a time, there was a movie reviewer who stumbled out of a cinema in the wee hours of the morning, half-drunk on buttery popcorn and watered-down cola. As he reeled from side to side down the street, clinging to lampposts for support along the way, he hiccupped once or twice and said, to anyone who would listen, “Tha wash the besht movie I’ve sheen in a long, long…(hic)…long time! That Kim Jarrey—he’s shump-tin else, lemme tell ya!” His audience merely waved a dismissive hand, muttered, “Aw shuddup!” and rolled over for another night’s sleep in the gutter.
Eventually, the movie critic made his way home, whereupon he sat down at his keyboard and—still reeking of overpriced theater snack food—started writing a review of what he’d just seen. He used phrases like “feel good” and “exactly what we need right now.” He waxed poetic, he sang high praises, he even invoked the name of—gasp!—Frank Capra.
However, he should have been writing sentences like “This movie is full of crap-a.”
When the cold light of dawn came through his window and slapped him awake, he lifted his head—a spidery strand of drool extending from his lip to the “F” on his keyboard—and looked at the words on the screen. He smacked his forehead with the heel of his hand. “What have I done?” he cried. But it was too late. The damage was done. His glowing review of The Majestic had already been published. And now he was the laughing stock of the movie review community. Worse, he’d betrayed himself, sold his soul to some Mephistopheles of the multiplex.
Ladies and gentlemen, I was that popcorn-drunk cine-scribe who wrote that dreadfully nice review of the Jim Carrey treacle-fest, The Majestic, several months ago. And now I’m here to make amends by telling you there comes a time in every movie reviewer’s life when he or she is filled with regret at what has appeared in print. As I look back at my previous Majestic words, I want to eat most of them.
This is not a case of being wishy-washy. It’s just that I finally woke up and smelled the toffee—the spun-sugar glaze that encases The Majestic in nearly every frame.
Is The Majestic a horrible movie, in the same way that Tomb Raider is an offense to film projectors everywhere? No, it’s not at that sublevel of dreck.
However, save for a funny first five minutes—a nice, satiric poke in Hollywood’s eye as real-life directors like Garry Marshall, Paul Mazursky and Rob Reiner are heard in a studio brainstorming session—The Majestic never lives up to its potential. It’s a movie that fails to rise above the La Brea Tar Pit of sentimentality.
Worse, it’s the kind of sentiment that traps audiences, catches them up in the moment and fools them into thinking they’re watching a good old-fashioned feel-gooder about truth, justice and the American Dream. I was one of those fools fooled in the dark of the theater.
In my original review, I wrote: “ This is exactly what we need right now. The Majestic is a tonic, a thick blanket, a warm bubble bath in a year when movies have become distressingly bland. There is nothing in The Majestic we haven’t seen before whenever we tune in to Turner Classic Movies, but there is comfort in that familiarity. The good guy will win and on his journey to epiphany there’s a lot of high drama and good cheer. Sometimes, we just like to know how it all turns out.”
Sure, you could take the movie at that face value—the equivalent of comfort food on the silver screen, the meatloaf of movies—but The Majestic should strive to be more than just a straight-faced return to World War Two era, Capra-esque goodness. If I really wanted to watch something to make me feel all fluttery inside, then I’d go rent the Reel Thing: It’s a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington or Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (Capra’s classics which, by the way, were filled with more spice than sugar). The trouble with The Majestic is it’s never clever enough to pull back for a moment and wink at itself (save for those opening minutes, which I’m now convinced were written by someone else, or perhaps ad-libbed by Marshall and the others).
Admittedly, in a Hollywood dominated by forward-pushing, bottom-line-box-office one-upmanship, director Frank Darabont’s defiantly old-fashioned story is a risky gamble. His other movies—The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile—have taken similar risks, but have been bolstered by either scripts or performances which helped them shake off the syrup clinging to their shoes. Here, neither screenwriter Michael Sloane nor leading man Jim Carrey (veering dangerously into territory recently staked by Robin Williams) can overcome The Majestic’s problems.
Carrey stars as Peter Appleton, a blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter in the 1950s who is about to step into Jimmy Stewart’s Wonderful Life shoes when his car plunges off a bridge and begins his travel to epiphany. Distraught over being summoned to appear at the McCarthy hearings, Appleton goes for a drive one night, crashes into a river, then awakens the next morning with amnesia. He’s discovered by kindly old Stan (James Whitmore—who should get separate billing for his bushy eyebrows) and taken into nearby Lawson, a small town still mourning the loss of 62 of its finest young men in World War Two combat. It’s the kind of place which could have been cast in the Bedford Falls mold—everyone seems to know their neighbor, the local diner is named Mabel’s, and all the men wear hats. The only thing it lacks is an evil Mr. Potter (everyone here is so nice you’d swear they stepped from a Twilight Zone episode).
As Appleton meets the townspeople, they all say he looks “vexingly familiar.” Then he’s spotted by Harry Trimble (Martin Landau), a widower whose only child, Luke, disappeared in battle nine years earlier. Harry is convinced that the dazed young Appleton is Luke…and everyone else in town agrees—even Luke’s old flame, Adele (Laurie Holden). The resurrected Luke starts to bring the town alive again, rejuvenating its long-lost spirit, even as he struggles to regain the memory he’s not sure he ever lost in the first place.
Lawson’s centerpiece is the Majestic, the once-glorious movie theater run by Harry. Together, father and prodigal son decide to dust off the cobwebs, repair the projector and rewire the neon marquee. As he spit-shines the Majestic, Harry waxes nostalgic: “Maybe you had worries, but once you walked through those front doors into this palace, you left them all behind. And you know why? Chaplin, that’s why. And Keaton and Lloyd. Garbo, even.”
Unfortunately, the invocation of those names only serves to remind us of everything The Majestic is not.
In a way, the story reminds me of my favorite Preston Sturges movie, Hail, the Conquering Hero (1941), in which the hayfeverish, 4-F Woodrow Lafayette Pershing Truesmith (Eddie Bracken) tells little white lies upon his return home and has the whole town believing he’s a war hero and eventually nominating him to be mayor. The perpetually dazed Peter/Luke also rallies the citizens and rekindles the spirit the casualties of war snuffed out. While the two films are polar opposites (Sturges dipped his film in vinegar, Darabont glazes his with honey), they are similar in their belief that people are basically good; it’s government that gets in the way of goodness and joy.
The Majestic (the movie) lets nothing stop it from grabbing this brass ring of flag-waving, music-swelling, eye-moistening goodness. Nothing—not intelligence, and certainly not restraint.
The pace is bloated, the dialogue is cheese-scented and the cast is so sickeningly sincere you expect apple pies to start dropping out of the screen and into your lap. If you’re sober enough, you’ll notice those apples are crawling with worms. It might take you several months, but eventually you’ll see The Majestic for what it is: shameless hokum.
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